


Rescue

by Covenmouse, warriorofice



Category: Bishoujo Senshi Sailor Moon | Pretty Guardian Sailor Moon
Genre: Action/Adventure, Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, F/M, Gen, Supernatural Elements, secret
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-28
Updated: 2019-10-28
Packaged: 2021-01-05 11:01:11
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,948
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21207455
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Covenmouse/pseuds/Covenmouse, https://archiveofourown.org/users/warriorofice/pseuds/warriorofice
Summary: From the moment he lands on a remote island in the South Pacific, Ned Prentiss knows he's in way over his head. Luckily, he has stellar partners Margaret Baker and Xander White to help him get through things (mostly) unscathed.





	Rescue

**Author's Note:**

> A return to the fandom after many years away, and my first time participating in a bang! Thanks to the mods of the Senshi & Shitennou Reverse Mini Bang 2019 and to all the authors and artists. I feel lucky to be part of such a fantastic undertaking!
> 
> Many thanks to Rae/Covenmouse, who has been my super gracious and wonderful collaborator on this piece. Please check out more of her amazing work at: https://twitter.com/Junkyard_King. 
> 
> Thanks also to Flor, who has been a terrific beta. Without further ado:

It was a glorious afternoon to be stranded on an island in the South Pacific. With an audible sigh of pleasure, she leaned back in the padded chaise lounge chair and wiggled her toes, which were painted a demure, dusky shade of pink. A glass of fruit juice sat at her elbow, the difference between the chilled juice and the ambient temperature causing beads of moisture to condense on the tall sides of the glass.

She tapped the rim of her sunglasses gently, activating the long-range scanner to inspect what she knew would be an empty horizon. As expected, nothing but sparkling blue ocean for miles… After a minute, her eyes narrowed abruptly. Was that a piece of driftwood or just an exceptionally large piece of seaweed?

As the object in question came bobbing closer to shore, she fiddled with one of the settings on the left temple of her sunglasses. They gave her an all-too-clear, zoomed-in image of an unmoving man lying on what looked like flotsam from a shipwreck.

She was debating how best to deal with the situation when the debris hit a particularly rough wave and dumped its cargo into the ocean. She heard a choked yell and spied a thrashing arm before the man disappeared below the surface of the water and didn’t come up again.

It only took her a few frenzied seconds to make up her mind. “Xander is going to kill me,” she muttered before touching a fingertip to one of her rose-shaped earrings and tossing her sunglasses onto the table beside the juice glass – they were high tech but somehow not waterproof – and diving smoothly into the water.

As she took long, efficient strokes towards the spot where she had seen the last trace of the man, the cool part of her mind noted that he hadn’t resurfaced again. The one piece of luck she had was that she spotted him the instant she put her head under the water. She resurfaced, took a giant gulp of air, and then went straight in for the retrieval.

Once she got ahold of him and began towing him back to shore as quickly as she could, her mind presented her with several possible courses of action depending on whether he could be revived or not. She was still running through potential scenarios when she reached the shore and started to drag him onto the sand by his left arm, no longer aided by the water’s buoyancy in carrying her cargo.

  


Art by Rae/Covenmouse: _https://twitter.com/Junkyard_King_

[](https://twitter.com/Junkyard_King)

She was not a short woman, but he was an extraordinarily tall man. When she had him far enough up the beach, she dropped to her knees next to him, checked his pulse, and began administering rescue breaths followed by CPR.

“Oh god, M, what the hell is that?” a voice drawled just as she finished the first cycle of compressions.

“You mean who, not what,” she panted, lowering her ear to the stranger’s nose and mouth. She jerked back when he let out a loud, hacking cough, and just missed being hit by the stream of water he expelled. “Help me get him onto his side.”

“No, M, you can’t be serious. This is really the worst, just the fucking worst. Couldn’t you just have let him die?” Despite his angry words, Xander dropped down to the sand and helped her shove the stranger onto his side. “Christ, he’s heavy. What do you think they feed kids where he comes from?”

“Apparently not what you got,” she quipped.

“Ha ha, very funny.” Xander jumped out of the way as the stranger nearly vomited onto his shoes. “Disgusting.”

“I can hear you, you know,” the stranger muttered once he finished retching, his face pale and his eyes closed. “I’m drowned, not deaf.”

“Good for you,” Xander snapped, already taking note of the posh British accent. “Now tell us your name and exactly what you’re doing here. Be quick about it, or you’ll wish you were back in the ocean.”

He cracked open his eyes, which were a striking shade of midnight blue, and slowly struggled into a sitting position with M’s help. “Thanks,” he told her, his heartfelt tone conveying much more than the single word.

She nodded curtly and sat back. “We do need to know who you are and why you’re here. It’ll go better for you if you’re honest with us.”

He looked between their stony faces disbelievingly. “What is this, a secret nuclear base?”

“Look, we don’t have much time,” M began earnestly, but Xander preempted her by pulling out a gun and leveling it at the stranger’s face.

“Answers. Now.”

“All right, all right!” The stranger’s eyes widened. “My name is Ned – er, Edward Prentiss. I’m an astronomer, and I was on my way to Taumako Island. My current project is to compare contemporary star patterns to those that were known to Polynesian navigators over a thousand years ago. My ship was caught in a horrific storm, and…

“I don’t really know what happened. I remember getting into a lifeboat with some of the sailors, but the next thing I remember is floating on the ocean alone, clinging to a piece of the boat. Then you saved me,” he finished, turning to M.

“What about your background in genetic engineering? Animal experimentation? What business do you have with Zirconia Industries?” Xander demanded.

“My _what_? I don’t have a background in genetic engineering, and I certainly have never experimented on animals. I’m an astronomer. I was rubbish at biology at uni; physics would be closer to my area. And I’ve never heard of this… Zirconia Industries, did you say?”

Xander and M traded glances.

“I think he’s telling the truth,” M ventured.

Xander sighed. “You’re probably right. But this certainly throws a spanner in the works.”

“I don’t think we have any choice except to bring him up to the house.”

“And whose fault is that?”

M shot back, “You would have done the same thing in my situation, don’t pretend you wouldn’t–”

“Hello? I’m still here, you know,” Ned interrupted their bickering. “And neither of you have told me who you are.”

The blond-haired man smiled at him thinly. “You have the dubious honor of having been saved by Miss Margaret Baker, here, and I’m Xander White. Now get to your feet. It’s time to introduce you to the mistress of the house.”

As the two men made their way up the beach at a much faster pace than he would have liked, Ned cast a backwards look at Margaret, who smiled at him encouragingly, but with a worried look in her emerald green eyes. 

* * *

“Let me give you a word of advice.”

Ned looked at Xander for the first time in minutes, having been preoccupied first with not collapsing from exhaustion, then with taking in the dimensions of the enormous and apparently top-secret complex that had appeared when they climbed up from the beach.

“Don’t tell them about the questions I asked you. Don’t ask any questions besides how you can get off this island. Be as boring as possible. That is your best chance of leaving this place alive.” Xander’s gaze drilled into him as mercilessly as the sun overhead.

“Are you having a laugh?” Ned shifted nervously as they came to a stop in front of an unmarked door.

“Do I seem like the laughing type?”

Without waiting for a response, Xander pressed his hand against the biometric palm scanner, waited for the beep, and entered the room after the door slid open soundlessly.

Unnerved, Ned followed him into a dimly lit room. It seemed like an office of some type, populated with glowing screens, metal filing cabinets, and hard, sterile furniture.

“Mr. White. I trust you have a good reason for the interruption?”

Ned waited for his sun-dazzled eyes to adjust to the darkness, trying to focus on the speaker seated behind the desk. It was an old woman with straight, slanting black eyebrows, heavy bags under her eyes, and lips as pursed as if she were eating the world’s sourest lemon. Her voice was thin, cracked, and precise as a scalpel.

“Yes, ma’am. This man washed up on the beach this afternoon. He appears to have been shipwrecked.”

“Is that so?”

He wouldn’t have thought it possible, but her lips pursed even further.

“Well? Who are you, stranger, and what are you doing on my island?”

Ned fought a strange urge to bow. He told her his name and basically the same sequence of events that he had related on the beach to Margaret and Xander.

“An astronomer, you say? Quite interesting. And what is your present position?”

“I’m a professor at the Institute of Astronomy at Cambridge University.” He wasn’t quite sure why, but he felt like after all the cryptic hints he’d received, it was best to seem like a person of at least minor importance, not easily disappeared.

“Hmm.” As her gaze shifted to Xander’s, so did Ned’s.

The blond man stared stoically back at the elderly woman, completely ignoring Ned, and Ned was willing to bet that he hadn’t moved a centimeter since they’d entered the room, except to breathe.

“And what do you think, Mr. White?”

Xander shrugged. His voice was bland as he answered, “The facts of his story and his credentials should be easy enough to ascertain. I don’t have any reason to doubt that he’s anyone but who he says he is.”

The woman smiled thinly – it was more of a grimace than a smile, really – at Ned. “You must forgive us, Mr. Prentiss. We are a private research institute, and our work requires the utmost secrecy and security. We have been on the receiving end of many attempts of corporate espionage of the most devious nature. Our last facility was broken into and heavily damaged under mysterious circumstances, so you can understand our caution.”

“Of course,” Ned agreed quickly. “I assure you, I have absolutely no idea what your work here concerns, nor, I confess, any interest. I didn’t even know this island existed. All I would like is to get to Taumako Island, or if that’s not possible, back to Australia or New Zealand, so I can make alternate travel arrangements.”

“Well, we will try to oblige you, Mr. Prentiss. As you see, we are a remote location, and communications are rather irregular owing to the reasons we have already discussed. Our next supply shipment is expected to arrive in about two weeks–”

“Twelve days,” Xander supplied when she looked to him.

“Indeed. So you will be able to depart then, and we will do our best to make you comfortable during your sojourn here.”

He tried to ignore the chill that made its way down his spine. “Thank you very much, Ms. …?”

“Zirconia will do.”

“Thank you, Ms. Zirconia.”

“The south wing, I think, Mr. White. Please make the necessary arrangements. And do acquaint our guest with the house rules.”

“Of course, ma’am.”

And with that, they were dismissed.

* * *

The house rules, as it turned out, were to restrict his movements to the rather spartan room he’d been assigned, a set of uninteresting public spaces, and the beach he’d washed up on – but only during the daytime. Going outdoors at night was strictly prohibited. He was to avoid any rooms with keypads and corridors marked “Restricted” (which seemed like 99% of them), and he was warned that they were alarmed and any attempt to go where he didn’t belong would result in severe consequences.

For the first day and a half or so, this didn’t bother Ned overmuch, since he spent most of that time sound asleep. Apparently, being shipwrecked and nearly drowning had a way of exhausting a man. The following evening, however, he was starting to feel more alive and more bored, and he was mildly dismayed to find himself alone in the cafeteria. The food was uninspired – a meagre selection of uninteresting sandwiches and a pot of tomato basil soup that had been sitting so long that it had acquired a skin on its surface. Ned was hungry enough that he didn’t mind the taste too much, but some company would have made the meal more bearable.

When he was done eating, he wandered through the halls, looking for something to engage his interest. There was no sign of Xander, no sign of Margaret, no sign of any living being, in fact. He had finally given up and was heading back towards his room when he rounded a corner and collided with a stranger.

“Oof!” he grunted.

The black-haired man he had collided with didn’t make a noise, merely took a step back and adjusted his steel-rimmed glasses.

“Sorry about that,” Ned said, holding out his head. “I’m Ned Prentiss–”

The other man regarded him expressionlessly, ignoring the outstretched hand. “You should leave here,” he said in an undertone. “Get off this island as soon as you can.”

Without waiting for Ned’s response, he continued on his original trajectory.

Ned stared after him, watching as the mysterious man eventually turned and walked through one of the forbidden doors. “What an odd place,” he muttered to himself.

He had trouble falling asleep that night, and when he finally drifted into slumber, his dreams were peppered with the sound of myriad unidentifiable animal howls and the memory of sharp flashes of light winking off of a pair of metal-framed glasses. 

* * *

After the strange encounter the previous evening and a night spent tossing and turning, Ned was determined not to spend any more time in the complex than he needed to. He got up as soon as he decided sleep was a fruitless pursuit and changed into a set of running clothes. At some point when he’d been asleep the first day, a stack of clothes roughly his size had helpfully yet somewhat creepily appeared in his room. Still, he had nothing to complain about, given that he’d washed up wearing only his trunks.

A nice long run on the beach would be just the thing to clear his mind, he decided. And because the sun was over the horizon, it must surely count as daylight hours. He’d be safe from whatever night dangers populated the island.

He smiled wryly at the thought. The chances were that there was nothing on this island except the employees of the complex, however unfriendly they might be, and the warning against going out at night was just to prevent some trigger-happy security guard like Xander from deciding he was a nefarious corporate spy and shooting him.

He had a fairly enjoyable run, after which he showered and took a nap. He wandered back to the cafeteria for dinner, this time not meeting anyone en route. Shortly after he returned to his room, however, Xander knocked on his door with the surprising invitation to join his hostess for a drink.

Ned got up readily and followed him to a spacious room with a fully stocked bar at one end and built-in bookshelves at the other. Zirconia, who was already seated in an overstuffed armchair, motioned him to its unoccupied twin across from hers.

“How nice to have your company this evening,” she said, her face crumpling into a mass of papery wrinkles that didn’t quite manage to approach a smile.

“My pleasure,” Ned said politely. He thought, but wasn’t entirely sure, that he heard a muffled cough from Xander’s throat.

“And what is your drink of choice, Dr. Prentiss? Don’t hold back – I do hold with having the essential amenities despite our remote location, so we have quite a respectable selection, if I do say so myself.”

“Just Ned is fine,” he said quickly. “A whisky would be wonderful.”

Zirconia nodded to Xander, who handed Ned a glass filled with amber liquid and Zirconia one filled with colorless liquid. The blond-haired man glanced at the old woman, who made a dismissive gesture with her gnarled fingers.

Once they could hear Xander’s booted footsteps disappearing down the hallway, Zirconia trained her laser focus on him.

Ned took a sip of his drink, trying to calm his nerves. “Kavalan?” he guessed.

Her razor-thin eyebrows winged upwards. “Very good, Dr. Prentiss,” she said appreciatively. “I hope it hasn’t been too difficult for you to occupy your time.”

“Not at all,” he said politely. “I had a rather enjoyable run on the beach this morning.”

“As we’ve discussed, we will endeavor to arrange some suitable transportation for you as soon as possible. In the meantime, please feel free to make use of the library. The collection is small but rather well-curated, I’ll admit.”

“Thank you very much. I’m an avid reader, and I’m sure that will help the days fly by.”

Zirconia regarded him intently. “And now, Dr. Prentiss, I thought we could discuss some of your work.”

Ned blinked. “My work?”

“Yes, your field of study. Astronomy, isn’t it?”

“That’s right.” More out nerves than a desire to talk, Ned launched into an enthusiastic description of his current project.

His hostess was an unexpectedly good audience, appearing to listen closely and asking trenchant yet relevant questions at all the right points.

“And what do you hope to learn, precisely, from these ancient Polynesian navigators? What insights could you gain from studying such a people, whose lives are so far removed from ours in time and place and circumstance?”

“An excellent question. It’s true that everyday life has changed to the point where our lives would seem unimaginable, or wondrous, or terrifying beyond belief to the ancient Polynesians. But the imprint of those that came before us remains and continues to shape our lives to this day and beyond. We are all human, after all.

“And basically all of the early human civilizations were fascinated by the stars. For some, the heavens were sources of information, perhaps readable to only a select few or open to the interpretation of the masses. The stars themselves were portents and omens, warnings or promises, harbingers of doom or heralds of glory. For others, they were a tool, a way to structure life and keep track of time’s passage – and for this particular group of Polynesians, an essential component of staying alive, something that enabled them to traverse vast unthinkable distances so they could adapt to the environment as needed. In a way, you could say that the study of astronomy is the study of human life itself.”

When he finally ran out of steam, Ned laughed, taking a sip of his drink to fortify himself. “I think you could give many of the academics in my field a run for their money, Ms. Zirconia. I haven’t been grilled this thoroughly since I was called upon to pitch my last grant proposal to a private foundation, and before that, it must have been my dissertation defense.”

She gave him her wintry smile. “You’re an excellent speaker, Dr. Prentiss, and quite convincing. I can see why you’re considered a rising young star in your field.”

At his look of surprise, she confirmed, “I did indeed look into your credentials, Dr. Prentiss. Now, I wonder… you have mainly been focusing on how the stars have been intertwined with the fates of humans. What about animals?”

“Animals?” he echoed blankly.

When she did not offer any hint as to her meaning, Ned mused, “I suppose in many civilizations, people have seen shapes in the constellations that accord with animals, which seems very natural to me. People see in the stars what they’re used to seeing in the world around them. So we get Ursa Major and Minor, Lupus, Canis Major and Minor, Perseus and Cetus, and so on.”

“And are you familiar with any legends concerning the stars and the transformation of humans to animals, or from animals to humans?” she queried gently.

“What, like werewolves, or – or shapeshifters?”

Zirconia smiled enigmatically.

“I can’t say I have,” Ned answered slowly, “although celestial conditions often had strong ties to magical elements in ancient civilizations, and I assume that some cultures in which the shapeshifter motif appeared could have required some sort of heavenly alignment among the planets or stars as a condition. I must confess I’m not aware of any such stories, but this is very far from my field of study.”

“Oh yes, of course.”

The conversation turned to other topics, and at the end of the evening, Ned was surprised to find that several hours had passed in mostly enjoyable discourse. Zirconia had a dry wit, and while they did not agree on many matters, her incisive observations were often intriguing and unexpected.

Ned had been expecting a more restful night after his run and two single malt whiskys, but the sound of howling monkeys and the piteous whines of caged dogs seemed to permeate his dreams.

* * *

The next day, the mind-numbing sense of isolation that had started to creep up on him disappeared when he spotted two heads, one brown and one blond, turning the corner. “Margaret! Xander!” he called, rushing to catch up with them.

The pair stopped, but he discovered that he’d been mistaken in one of their identities.

“My apologies,” he said to the stranger, whose flowing mane was a few shades redder than Xander’s. “I mistook you for someone else from a distance.”

“It’s a common mistake,” Margaret said easily. “Ned Prentiss, meet Torazo Miyamoto.”

After the men shook hands, Margaret said, “You’re looking well, Ned. Fully recovered?”

“Just about, but now I’m on the verge of dying of boredom instead of drowning. Where are you headed? Can I come with you?”

She smiled ruefully. “Even days in paradise can start to lose their appeal, can’t they? We’re heading to the local market, and you’re welcome to join us.”

It was a decently far walk, mostly filled with innocuous conversation. He recounted how he had come to be on the island to Torazo, who seemed friendly enough but shared little about himself. At one point, Ned turned to Margaret and said, “You know, I ran into someone a few nights ago, but I didn’t catch his name. Perhaps you know him – black hair, blue eyes, glasses, about 5’ 9”?”

“Sounds like Dr. Chiba,” Torazo said quietly in his throaty, almost purring voice.

“Probably,” Margaret said nonchalantly. “It’s so hard to keep everyone straight. You’ll love the market, Ned. It’s really quite charming for its size.”

Ned glanced over at her, and seeing the raised eyebrow and forceful green gaze, allowed her to change the subject.

Once they reached the market, Torazo deserted them in favor of flirting with a group of young women at the coffee stand. Ned couldn’t say he was displeased as he and Margaret moved down the line of stalls, some of them covered with canopies and others just blankets laid on the grass and dirt.

Ned’s gaze roamed over the piles of guava, bananas, coconuts, pineapples, and papaya, his mouth watering. “I had no idea what wonderful things lay just a few short miles away. The cafeteria food is a little bland.”

Margaret laughed. “Tell me about it! I never eat there if I can help it.”

“That’s right, I haven’t seen you there at all – or anywhere in the compound, in fact, until today. Where have you been hiding yourself?”

Her smile disappeared. “I’m sure it’s just a coincidence.”

He regarded her curiously. “Ms. Zirconia explained that the compound is a private research facility. Are you a scientist?”

“No.” She bent to examine a basket of silvery, wriggling fish.

“What do you do here?”

“I thought Xander warned you about asking questions,” she hissed as she got to her feet and moved purposively down the next line of vendors.

Before he could say anything else, Torazo rejoined them, and Ned played the wide-eyed tourist, asking what the best things were to buy and where he could get some of the colorful cloth he saw everywhere.

Torazo looked at the pink flowered sarong he had gestured to randomly and leered, “Do you have a special someone back home that you’re buying it for?”

“No, no, not at all,” Ned replied, flustered. He looked over at Margaret, who was going about her shopping and ignoring both of them determinedly, and hoped she hadn’t overheard the ridiculous exchange.

When they got back to the compound, Margaret and Torazo bid him farewell and vanished down one of the restricted hallways. Ned stuck his hands in his pockets and wandered back to his room. He had a feeling he wasn’t going to be seeing the contents of the parcels Torazo had carried back – fresh fruit, a few of the fish, some vegetables – in the cafeteria.

Which led to the question of who Margaret was feeding: Zirconia herself? It was entirely possible Margaret was acting as her private chef, but he had already met Zirconia and knew she ran the operations here. What would be the need to keep that a secret? And who was this mysterious Dr. Chiba she didn’t want him asking questions about?

* * *

Ned was getting impatient. He had spent the past few days roaming the halls (the ones he was allowed in), trying to run into either Margaret or Xander and shake some answers loose from them. Even Zirconia or the mysterious Dr. Chiba would do. But no one appeared, not even Torazo Miyamoto.

He continued to hear animal noises during the long, muggy nights. Sometimes they sounded like the screeching of a hawk or a falcon – some sort of hunting bird, at any rate; he wasn’t an ornithologist –and other times they sounded like the hoarse growls of a tiger. He wondered if he was starting to go mad. Lack of human contact could do that to a person.

If they weren’t going to answer his questions, they could at least get him off the island. He thought that about nine of the twelve days Xander had referenced had passed, but he wasn’t absolutely sure. 

Should he try to access one of the restricted corridors? Demand to be taken to see Zirconia? Find his way back to the market and see if any of the locals would be able to help him? Sit quietly and wait for the next supply shipment? He vacillated, trying to figure out which path involved the greatest chance of success and the smallest amount of harm, whether to himself or to others.

Before he made his decision, another nighttime encounter occurred. That evening, he was whiling away the hours in the library when he spotted some strange lights outside. The white beams were strong and directed, but bobbed every few seconds. After making sure the hallways were empty, Ned ducked out the nearest exit and made his way to the spot where he had seen the lights shining from inside the library.

It appeared to be some sort of search party, and they weren’t being particularly quiet about it.

“Go that way! He can’t have gone far.”

“Anders, search the southwest quadrant. Elena, you take the northeast. Chao, northwest.”

Ned snuck over to where he thought Xander’s voice was coming from, wishing he had one of those industrial flashlights everyone seemed to be carrying.

They were in the part of the compound that abutted the forest instead of the beach, and he could hear the others’ footsteps fading away in the undergrowth.

Once he thought they were far enough away, he called softly, “Xander?”

The piercing white beam swung directly into his eyes, and he winced, covering them with his hand.

“Ned? What the devil are you doing out here?” Xander walked over to him, a scowl on his face. “The grounds are off-limits at night.”

“Yes, everything’s off-limits,” Ned grumbled. “What’s going on?”

“None of your business. Go back inside.”

“Make me.”

Xander sighed heavily. “And K thinks _I’m_ juvenile. All this – security – is for your well-being, Ned. I’m trying to keep you safe. There’s been an incident with one of the research subjects, and you need to get back indoors.”

“What kind of incident?”

Xander took his arm in a firm grip and began towing him back towards the compound. “Is this how astronomers work? Ask questions first, get to safety later?”

Ned retorted, “It’s not like the things we study move particularly fast. They’re light-years away.”

“Well, this thing is _not_ light-years away, and I want—”

What Xander wanted, neither of them would ever find out. He cut himself off mid-sentence and went still, although his fingers retained their hard grip on Ned’s arm.

“What?” he whispered.

“Be quiet,” Xander ordered. Finally, he let go of Ned, using his right hand to aim the flashlight and his left to retrieve a gun from his back holster.

Ned stood quietly, trying not to move a muscle while Xander systematically scanned the surrounding foliage. The light picked up the glinting, ochre gleam of a pair of eyes in the brush a second before the sound of Xander’s gun ricocheted through the night.

A low growl – something lower to the ground bounded towards them on four legs – five more of Xander’s shots rang out before the beast crashed to the ground.

Ned considered it a heroic effort on his part that he had neither screamed nor run away during the action.

“Is that a good idea?” he asked when Xander lowered his gun.

“I need to call in the others for backup. You get inside, _now_. It’s better if no one knows you were ever out here.”

He was going to follow his orders, really he was, but he couldn’t help himself. “Is that… a tiger? There aren’t tigers in the South Pacific, are there?” Ned asked, feeling slightly dizzy. “Did it escape from a zoo?”

“Research incident. Animal testing,” Xander said shortly. He radioed the three he’d sent off to search the forest and instructed them to return to his location. “Get lost, Ned.”

“Did you _kill _it?”

Xander rolled his eyes. “No, I shot him full of carfentanil. Elephant tranquilizer. And unless you want me to shoot _you_ with some—”

Ned felt his heart nearly stop for the second time that night when the flashlight’s beam picked up something strange. “That’s not a tiger. That’s a man – or a man-tiger – a something, I can’t – that’s Torazo Miyamoto!”

But the man looked radically different than he had a few days ago. His mane of reddish golden hair was gone, replaced by dense, striped fur. His body was still shaped mostly like that of a human man’s, but his hands were tipped with long claws he surely hadn’t had when they’d shaken hands. And his eyes… the clear blue he remembered had become a glowing amber lit with green.

“They’ll be back any minute,” Xander said urgently. “Ned, get inside _now_, or you’ll never make it off this island alive.”

This time, he obeyed.

* * *

Ned opened his eyes blearily the next day. It was past noon, but given that he’d only been able to fall asleep sometime after dawn, he figured he was entitled to sleep in. Especially after the events of the previous night.

He sat bolt upright in bed. What exactly _had_ happened last night? Had it all just been some mad hallucination or a terrible nightmare?

He shuddered, remembering the bizarre tiger-man in the forest. No, he wouldn’t have dreamed up something so awful. It was Torazo Miyamoto. What had happened to him?”

Ned paced the length of his room repeatedly, trying to get a handle on the situation. Certain things were resurfacing in his mind.

_“What about your background in genetic engineering? Animal experimentation?_” Xander had interrogated him about these topics the very day he’d landed on the island.

Zirconia’s odd questions about stars, the fates of humans, and stories about human-animal transformations.

He spent the afternoon going through all sorts of scenarios, each crazier than the last but somehow no crazier than what he had witnessed last night. He was afraid to leave his room, but after not eating the entire day, hunger finally drove him to the cafeteria. For once, he was profoundly relieved that it was deserted. His thoughts were so tangled that he didn’t even mind the food, mechanically forking it into his mouth.

It would perhaps have been useful to run into Xander, if only to demand when he could get off this damned island. But thoughts of Xander led him to thoughts of Margaret. Both of them clearly knew what was going on here, and he wasn’t sure how he felt about that. Were they complicit? How much of a role did they have?

Ned was making his way back to his room when sirens suddenly started wailing and half of the doors in the hallways started to close automatically.

He froze. Clearly this was bad. No alarms had gone off yesterday. Given the events of last night, what kind of incident merited the alarms? Was it safer to be indoors or outdoors? In his room, or somewhere else in the compound?

The acrid smell of smoke decided him. On his way to the nearest point of egress, he realized that the emergency route took him past Zirconia’s office. The door was open, but the room was unoccupied. A bulky manila folder lay on the table. He grabbed it, stuffed it under his shirt, and ran for the closest exit, pounding on it in frustration when he discovered it had been sealed shut.

“Ned?”

“Margaret!” he spun around, dizzy with what he hoped was relief and not smoke inhalation. His eyes widened when he spotted the little girl with pink hair and red eyes holding tightly to her hand.

She shook her head warningly, and he swallowed his questions and tried to give the little girl a friendly smile.

“We have to get out! Miss Baker said there’s a fire!” she announced.

Margaret nodded. “That’s right, Small Lady. Wait here while I override the locks.”

While she was working on the keypad, Ned bent down beside the little girl. “Hello there. I’m Ned. What’s your name?”

“Chibi Usa.”

“What?”

“Chibi Usa!”

“I don’t think I’ve ever heard that name before…”

Thankfully, Margaret got the doors open before he exhausted all of his child-appropriate small talk. The three of them ran outside, then paused as Margaret muttered, “Where is that idiot?”

“No time to talk, let’s get out of here!” Xander yelled as he ran past them, soot smearing his face and hair.

More cries of wild animals filled the air, and so did the shouts and screams of men and women. Several wings of the compound were ablaze.

“What about Daddy?” Chibi Usa piped up.

Xander and Margaret exchanged a grim look.

“I’m sure he’ll be along soon,” Margaret said. “You have to come with us, honey; he’d want you to be safe.”

Chibia Usa opened her eyes – red loris eyes – wide and threw herself on the ground, pounding on it with her fists. “NO! I won’t leave Daddy! He’ll die, like MOMMY!”

Her shrieks went on and on into the night, somehow shriller than the electronic alarms.

“No choice, M,” Xander muttered.

“What are you–” Ned watched as Margaret extracted a syringe and deftly injected the little girl.

“It’s a mild sedative,” she explained as Xander picked up Chibi Usa and headed for the beach without another word. “Completely safe and calibrated to her age and weight.”

They made for the opposite end of the beach, and when they got close, Ned spotted a dark humped shape – the mouth of a cave. Before they settled themselves inside, he glanced back and saw that the entire compound had transformed into a fiery inferno. 

Once they were all inside the shallow cave and Margaret made sure that Chibi Usa was asleep and breathing normally, Ned asked, “What happened?”

Xander answered drily, “You may have guessed that this so-called research facility is a center where unethical genetic engineering experiments are being carried out to create animal-human hybrids. Well, it turns out they didn’t like being experimented on.”

“Dr. Chiba?” Margaret whispered, checking on the little girl again.

Xander shook his head, and they fell silent.

“I’m going out to patrol. The two – three – of you stay put. Supply copter’s due at 5 am sharp.”

After he left, Ned asked, “What’s going on here? What’s your and Xander’s role in all this?”

Margaret sighed. “We’re intelligence operatives. Our agency received rumors of the illegal and frankly horrifying experiments being conducted here, and we were sent to investigate the situation. Information gathering as the priority mission. Of course, we needed fake identities. Xander became assistant head of security, and I became Chibi Usa’s nanny. She’s Dr. Chiba’s daughter.”

“And who is Dr. Chiba?”

“It’s a sad story.” Margaret shifted, brushing some of the loose hair away from the little girl’s cheek. “Even though he’s only in his twenties, he was widely acknowledged as a superstar in his field. A medical doctor who also earned doctoral degrees in genetics and biomedical engineering. His wife, Usagi, died in a mysterious accident a few years ago, and we think that’s when Zirconia recruited him.”

“He experimented on his own daughter?”

“Her eyes were damaged in the same accident that killed his wife. The leading eye experts told him there was nothing to be done, but he…found a way.”

“And now he’s dead?”

“Most likely, but we don’t know for sure.”

“That child is going to need a lot of therapy,” Ned muttered under his breath.

“Maybe some color contacts to start with,” Margaret replied.

For the first time since they’d left the compound, Ned found himself smiling, and she was smiling back at him.

He shifted position, and the crackling of paper reminded him of the folder he’d grabbed from Zirconia’s office. “I don’t know if it’ll be of any use, but I guess you’d know what to do with it better than I would,” he said, showing her the folder.

Margaret’s eyes widened as she turned the pages. “These are the latest reports on the progress of the experiments! How did you get these?”

“Oh, I have my ways,” Ned replied airily.

She raised an eyebrow. “I bet the office door unlocked as part of the emergency protocols, and you waltzed right in with no one to stop you.”

“True,” he admitted. “It’s strange, though. For such a high-tech place, why use paper reports?”

Margaret smiled. “Zirconia’s eyes aren’t what they used to be, and Xander says that for all her technological prowess, she prefers paper reports. She reviews them daily, then shreds them, leaving only the encrypted electronic versions – which, as you might guess, have been incredibly difficult for us to get our hands on without attracting undue suspicion. You must have caught her at just the right moment, before she had the chance to shred them.”

“So it’s helpful?” he asked hopefully.

“Yes, especially combined with what Xander and I have managed to get our hands on. It’s a shame about the fire, but maybe it’s a blessing for those poor creatures. In the end, though, Zirconia is just a tool. A powerful tool, but a tool nonetheless. With each mission, we get a step closer to finding out who’s pulling her strings, but the criminal organization she’s a member of is like a many-headed hydra. You chop off the head of one branch, and two others spring up to take its place.”

* * *

The next morning, a helicopter arrived and hovered over the beach at exactly 5 am, as Xander had promised.

The four of them managed to get into the helicopter, and Xander turned to Margaret with a pleased smile. “You see? The extraction plan worked!”

She rolled her eyes. “For the first time in fifteen missions.”

“You’re our nation’s finest? We’re doomed…”

“Hey, M and I have saved your life several times now,” Xander said indignantly.

Cheerfully, Margaret said, “Besides, we’re not MI5. What, didn’t you notice that that’s an Australian accent he’s got going on there?”

Ned blinked. “So…”

Xander huffed. “I guess M let the cat out of the bag. Partially, anyway. M and I are partners who work for an international organization that recruits from around the world.

“Yes, Xander’s a little high strung–”

“And M has a saving people complex, whereas I don’t,” Xander finished proudly. “So that makes us the perfect team. K would love to separate us, but so far he can’t argue with our track record.”

“Just the fourteen failed extraction plans,” M quipped.

There were a million questions running through his mind, but Ned decided to start with the most important one. “By partners, do you mean…?”

Xander let out a crack of laughter, while M blushed. “Ned, old boy, it might go more smoothly if you knew M’s real name.”

“Xander, you can’t possibly–”

Whistling, the blond-haired man sauntered off towards the other end of the plane and started chatting with Chibi Usa.

Ned looked at her warily. “Is this one of those cases where knowing your name is going to get me killed?”

“It’s a possibility, but K will need to debrief you anyway. Who knows, perhaps he’ll recruit you to join our organization. You seem like a handy person to have around.”

With that, she shot him a dazzling smile and held out her hand. He heard the faintest trace of a French accent whisper into her lovely voice. “Emmanuelle Martin. You can call me Em.”

“Pleasure to meet you, Em.”

_End_

Final note: This is Sailor Moon with a few cameos by Dead Moon Circus characters meets _The Island of Doctor Moreau_ by H.G. Wells, neither of which I own!


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